Centrist parties are not progressive enough idealistically, they are mostly opportunistic. Instead of making politics to bring society forward and make people’s lives better, tgey mostly care about being and staying in power. Somehow, many centrist parties concluded that early successes of the rising far right parties beyond the usual few percent meant that voters bought far right programs and did not (also) want to make a statement against who’s in power, so centrist parties started to adopt far right policies, believing that would get voters back to voting them. Instead, they normalized far right positions, helping push the overton window further to the right, continuing to worsen the situation for most people instead of improving and making extremist parties not looking that extreme anymore but a valid choice in elections, resulting in further gains for far right parties.
Centrist parties are not progressive enough idealistically, they are mostly opportunistic. Instead of making politics to bring society forward and make people’s lives better, tgey mostly care about being and staying in power. Somehow, many centrist parties concluded that early successes of the rising far right parties beyond the usual few percent meant that voters bought far right programs and did not (also) want to make a statement against who’s in power, so centrist parties started to adopt far right policies, believing that would get voters back to voting them. Instead, they normalized far right positions, helping push the overton window further to the right, continuing to worsen the situation for most people instead of improving and making extremist parties not looking that extreme anymore but a valid choice in elections, resulting in further gains for far right parties.